How I buy things when Lightcone wants them fast
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Curated. Beyond the immediate advice of "how to get stuff fast", I think this expresses an important spirit of instrumental rationality: the willingness to not accept the standard way of doing things, to push back, and hunt for non-standard solutions until you succeed.
An element of this is not taking reality as irreducible but instead saying yes, 6-weeks delivery time can be broken down, and then you can optimize the parts, and then you can do better.
I also like that this advice doesn't come down to "don't take no for an answer" or "be pushy" which might be what you expect. It's more "search the solution space better than most other people".
And I think there's a lot of good transfer of the underlying spirit here to other domains, e.g. solving medical problems and other stuff.
This is a great collection of tips! I think it's also worth explicitly noting that most of these strategies involve slowing down other people's orders, and many involve more inconvenience/stress for the sellers, so it's important to weigh this tradeoff.
One thing I've found useful is to make sure I identify to the supplier what specifically I need about the product I'm ordering - sometimes they have something similar in stock which meets my requirements.
Interesting. Can you give us a sense of how much those asks (offer to pay for the extra labour) end up costing you?
Hard to give a general answer, but I think 2x someone's normal salary (especially if it's cash) is usually quite sufficient to get the job done, and kind of reliably has helped me in the past when I've try to find people happy to work night shifts
7. Ask if the workshop or factory is continuously producing your item until it’s done, or if it produces multiple items at the same time. If the second, ask if they can sprint your item all the way through the process instead of waiting on others.
Neat, I'm surprised about this part. I'd have expected places that parallelize to generally have a process for making things that's not easily converted into "sprint". Cool example of it actually working.
I think it depends on scale. If Ford produces cars in batches of 100(? 1000? more?) they probably can't rejigger the factory. In this case it was a local ironworker who probably had 10 or fewer guys working his shop, so a bit more flexibility.
I used to work in manufacturing. The vast majority of lead time in most manufacturing processes is parts/jobs waiting to move on to the next step (for a variety of reasons). So all you have to do to rush things is to move the rushed job to the top of the queue on step 1, then when it's done move it to the top of the queue on step 2, etc. It's somewhat common practice for manufacturers to employ people whose job is to expedite certain orders, basically by shepherding them through this process.
In other words, most manufacturing lead time isn't stuff that seems reasonable and predictable by someone outside of that particular system, like "this machine takes batches of 1000, so we're building up parts before starting". It's mostly stuff that seems dumb from the outside but intractable from the inside, like, "we've always done these in batches of 1000," or "Alice does this step, and she's on vacation, so we're waiting for her to get back [even though we all technically know how to do this step.}" Most of "Lean Manufacturing" is about cutting down this lead time at a fundamental level instead of having to rely on employing expediters.
Thanks for these tips, I can probably put them to good use! I'm curious though, what's so special about custom Japanese beds that you needed them quickly?
Great article, Jacob! Can attest to witnessing the results of yours/LW team's outperformance of service provider timelines many times.
Other things I might add (having done these myself):
1. Find about the current status for each of the steps in their respective staffing and inventory logistics / system. You might find out the specific bottleneck in their fulfillment process and work together to solve directly for that. For example, the solution for #12, the issue could be the drivers / fleet are not available on their routes (presumably always predetermined) and you just offer to use a private courier/pay their on-site staff overtime if it's going to be picked outside of business hours.
2. Continuing on point #6: Escalating to someone beyond the first person with customer service (the mgr/supervisor typically has more institutional knowledge about the company and decision making power to perform workarounds like tip #13 here).
2b. If you're able to get a hold of a manager, you can sprinkle in that you'd go to a competing brand - potentially even name drop them (eg: I've said "LG" to Dell for expediting a monitor purchase). They're incentives are lined up to fulfill your order for business and you can leverage one's loss aversion.
- There's bit of tact/grace required here to prevent things becoming adversarial: By doubling down on your state of duress for urgency/delivery (even being apologetic about it), you can claim that you prefer their brand/products but would have to go with a competitor that offers a similar model in the timescale you want.
3. "Sleight of Hand" styled-tip: Some manufacturers have many retail partners that they sell to. These are usually private/small businesses that advertise the same model/unit under a different label and customized SKU # such that querying for either of these two (also things I do) wouldn't return in your local options. They might be able to give you the names of store partners (browse online catalog / just call them).
4. Start with bigger brands/companies first. Bigger companies/brands are more likely to have retail partners or the fixed assets to support expedites (eg: real estate and OpEx for distribution centers). Since they're a larger organization, the tradeoff is to expect to deploy more communication strategies to escalate through call respondents until you get to the decision maker or person that is in a position to help you in real-time.
- I've personally seen the most variance on the manufacturing step. Making the thing is usually a lot more variable than delivering it. A model that is only made-to-order for a brand (often smaller/luxury businesses) where the model is produced overseas is kind of a hopeless gambit to get to your doorstep quicker.
Overall excellent writeup! Identifying bottlenecks is something I will consider in the future. I disagree with method 2b.) because, by my best estimate, it's a tactic that has the most effect on two types of managers whom both already want to complete your order if possible: manager A that will be unduly stressed by the sales loss, and manager B that are not stressed by it at all but see the sale as an easy way to make money personally. For manager A, the stress that makes loss aversion so effective may come from anywhere, whether it's a tight performance goals that determine their continued employment, desire to maintain their organization's reputation, or general pride in their work and desire to help. Manager A already cares whether you can get your product and will likely work with you if you explain why the order is particularly urgent (read: more urgent than everyone else's urgency, because we're all in a hurry). I consider reducing stress & suffering for people an axiom, so I don't want to add the additional pressure of loss aversion even in very urgent situations.
Meanwhile, there is also Manager B whom really wants the sale but doesn't care about satisfying you personally. If pressed, Manager B is willing to deliberately cut corners on the product (which may result in a loss of quality exceeding an acceptable margin) and is also liable to push employees to work unpaid overtime, cancel pre-existing plans, or other stressful conditions which can have a significantly negative effect on the employee's mental health. Even setting aside the increased stress and health concerns with Manager A and B, those of us reading this forum should be very aware that leveraging loss aversion results in more poorly calculated decisions than if we rationally work out a fulfilment plan collaboratively! If you're in a hurry, you have even less room for pure calculation errors!
Note 1: you will also often encounter some good ol' Manager Cs that don't particularly care whether the sale is lost or not.
Note 2: these people aren't theoretical. I have worked for many Manager As and 2 Manager Bs that have been in this exact situation, though notably I stayed employed with Manager As for significantly longer. I'm sure you can make a reasonable guess why! One of my family members is also a Manager A that regularly works out sales contracts for expedited airplane work, to the point that she's developed a standardized process for her organization. You certainly don't need to apply emotional pressure or other confidence tactics to convince her to help!
I'm very curious what type of data set led you to advice 4, since my own observations and every anecdote I have gathered have strongly reinforced the generalization of small distributors being more reliable for expedited orders.
Thanks for sharing these! I can also attest to witnessing you hustle for items fast :) I especially like your point 1
I appreciate these concrete strategies! My family has always encouraged us to “just ask, the worst they can say is no” and not feel bound by existing conventions: for rush ordering/shipping, custom orders, venue or property access, flexibility of deadlines, etc. Some examples I’ve had success with:
- getting customizations to costumes or art pieces- if the product is not advertised as customizable but already being custom made, this can be done pretty easily and sometimes without additional labor or parts. (Customization increases time, but I bet the production and shipping tips you provide could work well if some degree of urgency is still in place!)
- Access to private property for birding, including residential and business. People are very flexible, especially if you make it clear what you want to look at! Folks with extensive birdfeeders setup especially love to show off their success at attracting wildlife to random strangers. (You’ll have to generalize this very specific example yourself.) Aaand if they aren’t sure, offering to buy them a beer goes a long ways (Literally going to get them a beer at a bar after, giving them a $20 and saying it’s for beer, or having a beer on hand. I theoretically comprehend why this method is so effective, but dang the stuff is foul.) DISCLAIMER: I live in the North US, and it’s pretty normal here for people to enter each other’s property. If you live in a location where entering a property with permission from one party that isn’t communicated to other parties on the same property will endanger you in any way, please reconsider!!! It is not worth your safety.
- Regarding deadlines, I am a bit unorganized and perpetually cursed, so there are many many forms, requests, and assignments I have submitted late. This isn’t a good strategy to rely on, but in a pinch, if you see a deadline, ask yourself why it is in place! For standardized forms, almost all of them exist so that staff have a reasonable amount of time to complete processing of the forms before (whatever the next step is). Depending on the timeframe, squeezing in one more to process won’t change their workload significantly the way that moving back the official due date would, so they’re often happy to take your late forms even if the online portal or other standard submission method is now closed. (iirc procrastination statistics suggest around 90% of people overestimate their ability to complete a thing on time, resulting in bulk submissions on the last listed official day. This generally agrees with my experience managing anything with a deadline, with the exception of items people are genuinely internally motivated to complete (This is how I got into a habit of making humorous forms, which provide a small amount of additional motivation)).
All this being said, I haven’t had a ton of luck with production, so I’ll consider these strategies. Thanks!!!!!!!
Side note: being able to afford ten sofas at once would be great. I got mine third-hand for free and had to repair the supporting beams from a previous owner’s drunken bodyslam.
For the record, my sense of the biggest single problem with new orgs is that they don't know that they should read Paul Graham's essays, and more importantly they don't know that they should watch the YC video lectures. I feel in my conversations like I just don't have a shared referent for what a 'functional organization' looks like, these people keep talking about hiring as though it's a good thing, about looking professional, and so on. No, top priority is small number of people, and getting the key thing done impressively fast, whilst letting everything else be on fire.
If people knew they'd be judged for not having read that stuff, I feel like a lot of problems would just go away.
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